‘Atropia’ Interview: Callum Turner Desperately Wants to Be Bleeped
In a moment near the end of our interview at the IndieWire Studio at Sundance, presented by Dropbox, Callum Turner gets sheepish about dropping a certain four-letter word. The British actor asks if he’s going to be bleeped. When I say that he won’t — IndieWire is edgy and won’t tolerate censorship! — he says he actually really wants, perhaps desperately, to be bleeped.
Perhaps it’s the kind of American talk show convention the 34-year-old Londoner wants to embrace as he continues to make a mark in the U.S. The rising star has already been in “Green Room,” “Emma,” “The Boys in the Boat,” as well as “Masters of the Air,” but late night show ubiquity still lies ahead for him. And it’s gonna happen.
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The frantic desire to be bleeped certainly captures the manic energy of his new, cockeyed rom-com, “Atropia,” directed by Hailey Gates and co-starring Alia Shawkat. It’s about the U.S. military’s practice of creating fake villages to represent places around the world where service personnel may be deployed, to deal with culture clashes, and generally prepare for what to expect. Shawkat is an actress who hopes to leverage playing a role at the fake village into “stardom” as Shawkat puts it. “In this place she’s kind of a big fish in a small pond.”
As for Turner’s character, “I play Dice, who’s done two tours in Iraq and can only really live off the adrenaline of war,” the actor says. “He finds himself living in this facility as a way of getting back out to Iraq.”
This is a real concept the U.S. military employs, even if many viewers have never been aware of this before now.
“I tried to make a documentary about it first,” Gates, who also just wrapped a part in Kristoffer Borgli’s upcoming “The Drama” for A24, said. “So I did a lot of research and visited a bunch of the bases. Sort of working my way up the DoD, and they weren’t interested in my documentary. So then I thought it was a subject ripe for satire. I think America’s misunderstanding of the people they’re invading is inherently comedic. And I was really inspired by ‘M*A*S*H’ and the Lubitsch film ‘To Be or Not to Be,’ which is also a story of actors. I love movies like that where the tone turns on a dime.” (“Pause this video right now!” Shawkat declares after I spoil details from Lubitsch’s 83-year-old film.)
How good is Shawkat’s character as an actress?
“Is she still sort of acting even when she’s still herself?” Shawkat pondered. “There are multiple levels of it. She can just push her performance a little too much just to sell it. My mom saw ‘Shako Mako’ [Gates’ short film that serves as the basis for ‘Atropia’] and thought, ‘Oh no, Alia can’t act. She’s terrible, what is she doing?’ Seeing me do this big acting. And then she realized, ‘Oh that’s the character.’”
Gates played a memorable role in “Challengers” as the woman Josh O’Connor’s character seduces at a bar just so he can have a place to sleep that night. She’s extremely interested in the nature of performance.
“I don’t act very often but I love it because I find it really humiliating and scary and embarrassing and I like knowing what I’m asking other people to do,” Gates said. “I find that very sadomasochistic and it brings joy and pain into my life.”
As for what to expect from Borgli’s “The Drama”? Gates simply said, “It’s dramatic.”
Dropbox is proud to partner with IndieWire and the Sundance Film Festival. In 2025, 68% of feature films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival used Dropbox in their film production. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, and secure all the files that are important to any project.
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